Harry Potter and the Succession of Slytherin
by Sir Jason Gray
Summary: Summary: Sixteen years after defeating Voldemort, Harry Potter lives a normal life with his family. The Wizarding World is at peace. Then a series of Dark wizard attacks force him to join with Ron and Hermione to fight the new threat to their world. Nothing is left unscathed by the new Dark Lord and his minions—not Hogwarts, not their homes, and not even their families.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note: I've been planning this story for at least six months now, and thrilled to finally post it online. Technically, this story resumes from the end of _Deathly Hallows _ (the book), but it will include some elements from the movie franchise, as long as those details don't conflict too much with the book. I.e., Lavender Brown's death will be included. However, I'm starting this story after sixteen years, rather than J.K. Rowling's nineteen year time jump, but with the Potter children (James, Albus, and Lily) around the same ages they were at the end of _Deathly Hallows_. **

**I don't own any characters, settings, or anything else from this story. J.K. Rowling and Scholastic, Inc., own all literary rights, and Warner Bros., owns the movie rights. I make no money off this story, so please don't sue me. I'm a recent college graduate with student loan debt lol…**

**I hope you enjoy this chapter. Please review and follow, because I'll update more quickly if there's a lot of feedback, positive or negative.**

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**Chapter 1:**

**Platform 9 ¾**

If anyone had peered into the windows of number seven, Gobstone Road, Godric's Hollow on the morning of September 1st, (not that anyone did very often anymore), he or she would have observed that the Potter family was very normal.

Harry (he preferred to be called by his first name, and not Mr. Potter, if you didn't mind) had a respectable position in the Ministry. Before breakfast in the morning, he came downstairs in pajama pants and a white shirt, barefooted, to retrieve the morning paper. For breakfast, he ate toast with marmalade and butter with a glass of orange juice. During breakfast, he talked animatedly with his wife and children.

Harry had a fine layer of stubble at breakfast because he hadn't shaved yet, but he would after breakfast, as he usually did. His hair was unruly, as it always had been since his childhood. His sight had changed since Harry's childhood, so his green eyes were enhanced by a slightly thicker set of glasses than he had worn as a young adult. For a man who had just marked his thirty-third birthday that summer, Harry Potter was a surprisingly slim man. People who knew Harry well (particularly his mother –in-law) commented on his small size, and those who did not know Harry well kept their thoughts to themselves.

Ginerva (who did not answer to her first name unless called by her father or mother), Harry's wife, was also rather normal. She rose at dawn to cook breakfast and to guarantee that her two older children, James and Albus, had their trunks and other belongings already downstairs before they departed for the beginning of term. While she cooked, Ginny—which she preferred to be called—kept her red hair in a ponytail while she cooked. In her former life, she had been a renowned athlete, but during the pregnancy with her first child, Ginny retired from that world and settled into a domestic life with her husband. She'd become a very good cook and a very skilled homemaker.

They were exceptionally normal, at least, that is, on the surface. Which is the only normal place for anyone.

On that morning, when Harry came downstairs to the breakfast nook of his rather large and tidy home (which was entirely attributable to Ginny's cleaning skills), it was a welcome reprieve to find that someone had cooked breakfast for him. Ginny still stood at the stove, waving her wand at eggs in the frying pan. Harry had not enjoyed a home-cooked meal for the last three weeks. He came downstairs with due reluctance because it was the morning of the beginning of the school term at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and he had slept only two hours. In addition to the stacked trunks and a satchel of schoolbooks belonging to James, there were two cages housing two sleeping owls beside the door. One was snowy white, and the other was golden brown.

That was just the beginning of the differences between the world of the Potters and the non-magical, Muggle World.

"Looks delicious, Ginny." Harry walked up to his wife and hugged her. "And I'm not just talking about the food, either." With his arms still embracing Ginny's waist, Harry placed a playful kiss on her exposed neck.

"Oh stop, you!" Ginny swatted him with her spatula. It was a playful strike, rather than the more aggressive and lethal one she reserved for household pests, or the sharp, disciplinary one she administered to the children. "The children will be up at any moment, and you're playing around like _we're _ still at Hogwarts."

"Do you want me to find my wife less desirable?" Harry hadn't let go of Ginny yet. He rested his right cheek on her left one and watched her wrist guide the food to perfectly cooked perfection.

"At it again, are you two? Will there be a fourth in our number soon?" a boy's voice came from the kitchen stairs.

Two pairs of reluctant feet stepped down the stairs and dragged across the kitchen. They belonged to two dark-haired, lanky boys. The taller, older boy had his father's dark green eyes and the lean height and easily freckled complexion of his mother. The younger one had the dark brown eyes of his mother, his father's jet black hair, and healthy complexion.

"Don't be so curde, James," Ginny admonished her older son. "So what if you've heard about the birds and the bees over the vacation. There's no need to tell the whole world. Nobody likes an insufferable know-it-all."

James Potter sat at the table beside his father. At only fourteen years of age, he was already two inches taller than his father, and it was obvious even when he sat down. When Ginny set a plate of toast in front of him, James started devouring it immediately. "No one except Uncle Ron."

"Your aunt is not that type of woman. And don't ever say that again," Harry warned James.

"Don't ever say what, Dad? Aunt Hermione _is_ a know-it-all, and it's very insufferable. She's always rattling off some fact or figure. 'Did you know that Borneo is part of an island chain that includes some of the longest lived wizards in the world?' 'Chinese wizards had developed a use for every metal thousands of years before European wizards began their investigations of alchemy.' And I have to see that woman today?"

Harry started to laugh at James' spot-on imitation of Hermione's voice, but Ginny shot him a glance over her shoulder. "James, I don't ever want to hear you speak of your aunt or any other adult in that disrespectful tone again."

"Now you sound like Gram, talking about Uncle Charlie's newest girlfriend."

The younger Potter boy sniggered behind his hand. Harry still saw it. "Is that funny to you, Albus?" Ginny demanded from the sink.

"No, Mum. I'm sorry." Chagrined, Albus folded his hands in his lap and stared at his breakfast plate.

Harry decided to change the course of the breakfast conversation. "So, James, what did you do during your holiday?"

"Dad, I stayed home while all my mates went to foreign countries. Even Hugo and Rose traveled, and they're not even old enough for wands yet! The prats." James tapped a particularly dry piece of toast against the plate. "Oi! Mum, can I have a bowl of Magic Pops instead?"

"Eat the food your mum just fixed for you," Harry said sternly. He glanced at Albus, who had already cleaned his plate and still sat at the table, waiting to be dismissed. "And James, you had your holiday abroad in New Zealand just during Christmas."

"So did Hugo and Rose." James broke the toast. "Mum, please, can I have some cereal instead?"

Harry glanced at Ginny, who was already removing a bowl from the cabinet beside the pantry. Within a few silent seconds, she had poured a bowl of Magic Pops cereal with ice cold milk, just the way James liked it. Ginny set the bowl in front of her elder son and glanced at Harry. When their eyes met, Ginny went to the stack of dishes in the sink. If she washed with magic, the task would have taken less time, but Ginny washed by hand instead.

Harry watched James eating his cereal. "We've discussed this before, James. You and everyone else in this family have to deal with less travel than most children your age because…"

"Because my dad is the Boy Who Lived?"

"Precisely because of that."

"What a great big whoop for me. Sometimes I wish I hadn't been born!" James slammed his hands on the kitchen table and stormed from the room.

Albus glanced from his father to his mother and back to his father. The only sound in the kitchen was that of Ginny scrubbing the skillet. "May I please be excused?" Albus said quietly.

"Yes, Albus; make sure your brother is packed and ready to depart. The train leaves in an hour." Harry groaned and rested his face in his hands. He waited until he could not hear Albus' feet on the stairs before he spoke to Ginny.

"I am tired of having the same conversation over and over with James. Life for us was harder than it is for him at that age. He doesn't have Voldemort trying to kill him every day that he breathes, or Death Eaters lurking around every corner. We've talked about these things since before he was born. He just makes every day difficult."

Ginny scrubbed furiously at a glass with a smooth dishrag, so she wouldn't leave scratches on its surface. Harry watched his wife at work. He had learned that Ginny, growing up as the only daughter of a homemaker, preferred a house that was spotlessly disorganized. She was dedicated to the cleanliness of everything in the house, even if things didn't always stay in one place.

"James is just a child. Being who he is, that's hard for him. He's just lashing out."

"What could be hard for him? We've worked hard to provide everything for him. Ginny, he didn't have to grow up the way you or I grew up. He's been loved and all his basic needs have been met."

"It doesn't diminish the impact of being who he is."

"Being who I had to be, that was hard."

Ginny set the last of the dishes in the drain beside the sink. "Harry, he's just a child."

"_I_ was just a child, too, but I dealt with my duty!"

Harry slammed his fist into the tabletop. He and Ginny had had the same argument too many times lately, and James wasn't the one who had to deal with the detrimental consequences. There were times when their discussion had grown so heated that objects had flown across the room, from either of them losing control over their magic, or that words had been exchanged from which there was no retraction.

Ginny walked to her husband's side, took his left hand in both of hers, and knelt down beside him. In the post-dawn sunlight, Harry thought she was as enchanting as when they had begun dating in his sixth year at Hogwarts, as amazing as the day they had married.

"We went through those Dark Days, so he wouldn't have to. You faced Voldemort and his army of Death Eaters so that children like James, Albus, and Lily would be born into a world without that kind of terrifying power looming over their heads. You _died_, Harry, so that our children—and a thousand, thousand others—would never have to fear a Dark Lord. You've given our children a hope and a future."

Harry sighed. As the head of the Auror Department at the Ministry of Magic, there were things he knew about and did not tell Ginny. Things were transpiring in the world around them, even as they spoke in the safe solitude among stainless steel cookware that Harry could not tell her. He had created a safe world for her and their children, and he had to defend it.

"James doesn't appreciate…" Ginny swooped in and kissed Harry on the side of his mouth.

"Yes, he does. He has no idea how to show it. No, come on, we have to meet the Weasleys at King's Cross in thirty minutes, and I'd rather be early this time. You know how insufferable Ron is when we're late."

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Bathed, packed, and dressed, the Potters departed from the house with two large trunks, two gilded owl cages containing two large mail-carrying owls, and a dozen schoolbooks in a newly modified Range Rover. Harry took the driver's seat, while Ginny rode in the front passenger's seat. Fourteen-year-old James sat behind his mother, and ten-year-old Albus sat behind Harry, while their daughter, seven-year-old Lily sat between her brothers. As she climbed into the SUV, Ginny said, "Dad said you'll appreciate the latest additions to the car."

Arthur Weasley, Harry's father-in-law, had an insatiable fixation for Muggle technology. He took apart commonplace things like toasters, cell phones, and computers used by non-magical people in an effort to understand how the non-magical people functioned without magic. At one point, his wife Molly had exiled him and all his projects to their garage, because he had filled up their home with so many modified things. Arthur had taken the opportunity to work on even more projects, including a flying car, without his wife's daily supervision. Since he had a position with the Department of Muggle Artifacts, Arthur was at least influential in writing laws that legitimated his explorations.

Harry laughed at his wife's observation and steered the car onto the highway that bypassed Godric's Hollow and flowed into London. The long road from Godric's Hollow, a village populated entirely by wizards and witches, to the highway was made to look like the entrance to a privately owned, dilapidated estate and dominated by a crumbling castle, which were not rare in their area of Britain. Muggle trespassers occasionally ventured onto the estate, but they were turned away by magical enchantments that caused the non-magical people to become distracted by a ringing cell phone or a sudden emergency. In Harry's opinion, the magical defenses around Godric's Hollow were the best he had seen outside of Hogwarts.

The Range Rover got the Potters to London in thirty minutes. It seemed to Harry that Arthur had modified the car to ease between the fast-moving cars of London's traffic, and to slide from one corner to the next without jumping a curb or striking any pedestrians. His latest additions also included the car's ability to find an excellent parking space near the front doors of the train station, so that Harry and Ginny managed to locate a trolley immediately and rush their children and luggage into the train station.

The train that the Potter children had to catch was, as many other things in the magical world were, hidden from Muggles in plain sight. Young witches and wizards boarded the train to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry at Platform 9 ¾, which was concealed within the barrier between Platform 9 and 10. There were a variety of ways wizards and witches chose to reach the platform. The Potters chose the most subtle way: They leaned their trolley of luggage and against the barrier, and glancing around the station, they slipped through.

"Bollocks, Ron and 'Mione are already here." Although Ginny said this through gritted teeth, Harry saw that his wife's face was alive with levity at the sight of her brother and sister-in-law.

Because of the sizable field of camerawizards that had already gathered around someone on the platform, Harry already knew Ron and Hermione were at the platform. There were only a few people who could have drawn that many camerawizards, and none of them were tall and lean with striking red Weasley hair. And none of them would have pushed aside a crowd of camerawizards to embrace old friends like Ron and Hermione did when Ron spotted Harry and yelled "Harry! You made it!"

Ron hadn't sought fame or fortune after the Battle of Hogwarts; even though, as the youngest of six brothers, he had spent most of his life feeling overshadowed by the accomplishments of his older brothers. He simply tried out for the position of Keeper for the Chudley Cannon Quidditch team when Quidditch resumed its normal schedule. With Oliver Wood at the helm as the team's Captain and top Keeper, it seemed unlikely that Ron would ever have had any playing time at all. It was only because of an injury that took Wood out of the game for three weeks during the Quidditch World Cup, that Ron had any playing time at all.

In his first Quidditch World Cup appearance, Ron made fifty-eight saves and led England to its first Quidditch World Cup in centuries. His celebrity status was cemented.

Camerawizards followed Ron as he approached and hugged Harry. "Beat you here again, mate," he whispered into Harry's right ear.

"It won't happen again," Harry whispered back.

Hermione hugged Ginny then Harry. She knelt down and gawked over the Potter children. "James, you're getting so tall! You know, at your father's age, he already had his first crush: Cho Chang, that Seeker who went to play for the Manchester Medallions? Lucky for all of us, your mum never gave up on him. Cho was a dreadful person….Albus, how are you feeling today? It's your first year, I bet you'll make excellent marks…And Lily, you've become such a beautiful little lady!"

Ron and Hermione's children, Hugo and Rose, dragged their feet to join the two couples. At five years old, Hugo was already showing the Weasley height trait as he towered over his sister, the three-year-old Rose. Both children had their mother's dark brown eyes and their father's flame-colored red hair. They smiled shyly at the older Potter children.

As Hermione and Ginny began chatting and gushed over the children, Ron pulled Harry aside. Camerawizards followed them from a distance. "Listen, mate, Perce said there's been an uptick in Dark activity lately. Said you'd know more about it than anyone else," he whispered warily. "Is that true? Is it…?" His eyes drifted to the lightning bolt scar on Harry's forehead without another word.

Harry was only one year old when he received the scar at the hands of the greatest Dark wizard in history. Voldemort had come to Godric's Hollow, to a cottage just down the street from where the Potters now lived, on the ill-gotten knowledge of a prophecy predicting his downfall from one of two children born on Harry's birthday. Voldemort had chosen Harry, and had broken into the cottage, slaying Harry's father James first. Then he advanced upon Harry, but Lily Evans Potter refused to stand aside and let Voldemort slay her son. Because of her sacrifice, Voldemort's attempt to kill Harry had backfired, ripping him from his body and destroying half of the Potters' cottage.

But Harry had lived.

"No, Ron, Voldemort's been dead for more than seventeen years. We destroyed all the Horcruxes. He has no more ties to this world. And I can't believe you're still afraid to say his name!"

"What do you expect? When he was at full power, there was a Trace on his name that abolished all of our security spells, and we were caught. Hermione…" Ron flushed, swallowed, and glanced at his wife. Hermione met his gaze and offered a wistful smile before turning back to her conversation with Ginny.

"Ginny told me she still has flashbacks sometimes," Harry said.

"I promised her I wouldn't say anything, ever."

"And you didn't. My wife did."

Ron laughed an empty, sardonic laugh. "Do you know what the biggest regret is, form that day? I wasn't there to protect her. I also regret not killing Bellatrix, but…"

"Mum did what she had to, Ron. It was her chance for some closure, you know that. "

Ron nodded slowly. "If there has been more activity of late—and you haven't said there isn't…"

"There has been, but it's not Voldemort. Someone has begun to do the foul things…"

"Like what?"

Harry fretted over a response. As the Head of the Auror office, he received all reports of Dark wizard activity in England, Ireland, Wales, Scotland, and even coordinated with Magical Defense in Spain and France. He had blocked publication of any stories of Dark Activity. Aurors who reported to the scene of an attack were under orders to Oblivate any witnesses within a four block radius. Harry guaranteed one hundred percent secrecy by Oblivating those same Aurors in person. No one could know. And Ron, like Ginny, wouldn't understand Harry's motives.

"I can't disclose that information, Ron."

"Bloody hell! Why doesn't the public know? The people have a right to know!"

"Don't be naïve, Ron. That's not even possible."

"Why, Harry? Is it because you're the Head of the Auror Department, and I'm just a Quidditch player? Or is it because I finally achieved recognition at something other than being the sidekick of the Boy Who Lived?"

"Ron, don't be a prat! I thought those days were far behind us!"

Hermione and Ginny joined their husbands. "It's almost time for the train to leave," Ginny said. She looped her arms around Harry's. "We'll see you two after the children leave," she said to Ron and Hermione.

Ginny pulled him to the children, while Ron and Hermione spoke in low tones. James had gone off and joined a group of friends in his same year. One of them, a lean girl with curly blonde hair, ruffled James's jet black hair. He playfully swatted her away. Teddy Lupin, Harry's godson, was hugging Bill and Fleur Weasley, the parents of his girlfriend Victorie. Harry had allowed Teddy to spend the summer holiday at the Weasleys' cottage on the coast, but just like his biological son, Harry felt that Teddy was growing up better than he had been allowed to. Albus had the fretful look of a boy who was without friends or companions as he stood beside the train.

"Albus, what's wrong?"

Harry's younger son stared up at him. "Dad, James said the Sorting Hat is going to send me to Slytherin. O-or it might send me back home. I'd rather go home than end up in Slytherin."

Over Albus' head, Harry spotted James stepping onto the train with his friends. Harry wanted to speak to his elder son, but James was gone too quickly for anything more than a tense glance.

"There is nothing wrong with the Slytherin House." As he said this, Harry ironically spotted Draco Malfoy. From his first day at Hogwarts, Draco Malfoy seemed determined to oppose Harry. They were even opposites in looks: Where Harry was dark-haired, green-eyed, and composed of lean muscle from his physical training as an Auror and as a Seeker, Draco was slim and almost colorless in both hair and eyes. But since the defeat of Voldemort—the most powerful Dark wizard of his age and the murderer of Harry's parents—Draco had proved to be a trustworthy member of the Hogwarts Board of Governors and a good confidant in the Department of International Magical Affairs. He simply wasn't the same Malfoy that Harry had known.

Harry gave Draco the slightest of greetings, a simple nod of his head. Draco returned it, and placed his slender left hand on the right shoulder of a small boy with parted blond hair and a pale complexion identical to Draco's. He guided the boy onto the train.

"B-but James said."

"Listen to what I'm saying…"

At that moment, an explosion ripped through the front of the train.


	2. Chapter 2: The Unbreakable Spell

**Author's Note: So…no reviews from the last chapter, although I am glad to welcome guillermina as a follower to this story. This second chapter was really hard to write, but I hope for more reviews and followers. Enjoy the update!**

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**Chapter Two: The Unbreakable Spell**

The explosion launched Harry off his feet. Albus' hand was ripped from his, and Harry landed hard on his back on the concrete platform. Pain radiated through his body. Something cracked. Since he had suffered his first broken arm in his second year at Hogwarts (in addition to a few other fractures since reaching adulthood), Harry was familiar with the painful sensation of the initial break followed by the rush of adrenaline.

Harry rolled onto his side. His ears rang with the tinny sound of minor hearing loss following an explosion, and his vision was clouded by the thick gray smoke enveloping the platform. Harry groaned from the aching in his head; other than the splitting, pounding pain in his head and the tear-jerking agony of his broken bone, Harry thought about his children, Ginny, Ron, and Hermione. There was a stink of something not right about the train's explosion, something Dark.

"Albus! James! Ginny!" Harry knew his mouth was moving, but he couldn't hear his own voice. The ringing in his ears, that was all he heard at the moment. Harry rolled onto his left side and put his left hand under his body to stand up and gain his bearings. There were lights flashing back and forth through the thick smoke shrouding Platform 9 ¾. "Ginny! James! Albus!" The lights looked like spells being cast, and that could not be a good sign at all.

Harry staggered forth into the smoke. He felt as unsteady on his feet as he had the previous Christmas, when George (one of Ron and Ginny's older brothers) had magically slipped half a bottle of Firewhisky into a glass of Harry's egg nog. Harry was still piecing together the events of that night with Ginny's help. He had to find Ginny. Harry reached into his pocket for his wand, his most reliable and consistent weapon in the magical world.

"Ginny! Ginny, where… where are you? Albus!"

Suddenly, someone grabbed Harry's shoulder. He whirled around, ready to employ his favorite defensive charm, the Expelliarmus Charm, but he lowered his wand before casting the charm. Ron leaned on the shoulders of Hermione and Ginny. Ron looked as though he had fallen unconscious, and Ginny's and Hermione's faces were covered with soot. They were sweating from the strain of carrying Ron's body.

"Hermione! Ginny!" Harry opened his arms wide to embrace the two of them. The ringing in his ears started to subside.

"Thank Merlin, we found you, Harry!" Ginny hugged her husband a few seconds longer than Hermione and brushed her lips against his right cheek.

"Ron, is he…"

"He got hit with a spell…I'm not sure what, but it looked like a Memory Charm. It's working like a Stunning Charm though," Hermione responded.

A man bellowed from within the smoke, and there was another explosion that rocked the station. Screams and more exchanges of lights followed the explosion. Hermione and Ginny cowered. "Where are Hugo and Rose?"

"We had to place a Concealment Charm over them. We tried to send them back through the portal to King's Cross but the portal's shut! Everything's gone crazy…" Hermione sniffled. "We can't get Ron to wake up but he has a pulse. He's not dead."

"Harry, where are James? And Albus? Weren't they on the train?" Ginny asked. Her petite face scrunched with worry.

"James was, but not Albus. Not yet." A stray spell cut through the smoke and blasted out a chunk of wall behind Harry. The three of them cowered and searched through the smoke for the wizard who had cast it. There was no sign of him or her. There was no way to tell friend from foe. "We have to…we have to find them!"

The three friends crouched to stay lower than the thickest part of the smoke and avoid any spells. "We can't carry Ron! It's impossible in all this smoke!" Ginny yelled.

"We can't leave him behind! We just can't!" Hermione yelled back.

"I don't want to leave him behind either, but right now, he's just deadweight. We need to find James and Albus, and find a way out of here. And we need to help whoever else we can help, too," Harry whispered. He guessed that they were away from the protection of the back of the train platform. The closer they were to other people, the less risk he wanted to take that someone might hear them.

Hermione lowered Ron from her shoulder, took off her wedding ring, and tapped it with her wand. "Portus," she whispered. It glowed bright blue. She touched Ron's limp left hand to the ring and he disappeared in a swirl of color and light. "There. I sent him directly to St. Mungo's."

A fireball, as wide around as the three of them, sailed over Harry, Hermione, and Ginny's heads. They heard the earth-shaking explosion when the fireball struck the wall of the platform. Debris flew from the wall and landed all around them in massive, rock-sized chunks. The fireball seemed to eat away the remaining smoke, providing a clear view of the train docked at the platform.

The explosion from the front of the train had created a hole along the right side of the train's front two carriages and engine. Scarlet stained scarlet as the shimmering blood of Hogwarts students painted grim lines along the broken walls of the train carriage. There were more than a few dead people lying among the rubble on the platform from the explosion. Smoke still billowed from the train. Harry's jaw dropped.

"No…"

"Oh God, the children!" Ginny started to run toward the second carriage of the train, followed closely by Hermione and Harry.

A brilliant blue light struck Hermione and slammed her against the side of the third carriage. Ginny stopped in her tracks, as another beam of light struck Harry's right side. It felt like the time a basilisk fang had embedded in his arm in his second year at Hogwarts, only it was in his entire right side. Harry fell to the ground, clutching his side in pain. He was still aware enough to see a blinding red light envelop Ginny and lift her from the ground.

"Ginny! Hermione! No!" Harry grunted. In his fourth year at Hogwarts, a demented Death Eater had tested Harry with two of the three Unforgivable Curses—the Imperius Curse, which allowed the caster to control the mind of the spell's subject, and the Cruciatus Curse, which inflicted immeasurable amounts of agonizing pain on the subject of the spell. Harry had easily thrown off the Imperius Curse, but the Cruciatus Curse was the worst pain he thought he would ever feel. He was wrong.

"Where do you think you are going, Missus Potter?"

Suddenly his head nearly split open along the lightning-bolt scar on Harry's forehead. It was a relic from the attempt on his life by Lord Voldemort, when Harry was just a one-year old baby. Lord Voldemort's killing curse (the Avada Kedavra, the third of the Unforgivable Curses) rebounded upon him and ripped him from his body. Although Harry had survived because his mother sacrificed herself to keep him alive, Voldemort had killed both his parents. Whenever Harry's scar hurt, he knew Voldemort felt murderous.

But Voldemort was dead. He had been dead for sixteen years.

He lifted his wand in his hand. Suddenly it flew from his grasp. "You won't need that today, Mister Potter." The voice was cold but deep, like a baritone singer's voice. Harry thought the voice was familiar. He looked around for the source of the voice, even as his body was ripped by agonizing pain.

Five shrouded figures emerged from the smoke. Then there were more than five. One stood out from the rest, leading the advancing pack. He was taller and slimmer than the others, from the look of his robes. "I think we should reunite the happy couple."

He waved his wand, and the red light vanished from around Ginny's body. She collapsed only a few inches from Harry. Harry crawled over to her, lifted her head, and cradled her body in his arms. She wasn't breathing, and there were hundreds of cuts covering her body. "What did you do?!"

The tallest of the figures stepped closer to Harry and Ginny. "Magic that even you do not understand, Mister Potter; even with your high-ranking Ministry position and all your knowledge of the Dark Arts that entails." He gestured with his wand hand at Hermione and Ginny. "You have always been so foolish, Mister Potter. You're always trying to protect others. Haven't you failed today?"

"Leave them alone! If you want to destroy me…"

"I will do as I please, Mister Potter. I thought you might enjoy the knowledge that your children are dead. Your best friends, whatever that is to you, are dead. And your exceedingly plain, blood traitor wife is dead. And now, you shall join them. Now that there is no one left to die for you."

There was a brilliantly green light that rushed at Harry. A woman screamed, "Harry!"


	3. Chapter 3: An Incurable Malady

**Author's Note: I'm thrilled to send thanks to BreathingInWords for adding this story to your list of followed stories, and to rhmac12 for posting two reviews, one for each of the previous chapters! Whoo hoo! Seeing this was my motivation to post another update within only a week. I kid you not. Also, just wondering: Did anyone else see the Pottermore news article with Rita Skeeter? If so, I hope you all will recognize some of the elements from that update as I incorporate them into the story. If not, sign up for Pottermore ASAP (Btw, I'm in Slytherin House).**

**Continue to review, follow, and enjoy this story!**

**Chapter Three: An Incurable Malady**

As weightless as he felt, Harry felt he was drifting in a river current with his eyes closed tightly. He couldn't see anything—not even the inside of his eyelids—as he was carried along but Harry thought he heard a chorus of voices softly chanting his name: "Harry, Harry, Harry." When he tried to listen more closely and distinguish one voice from another, they blended together all the more. Harry felt very comfortable and increasingly uncomfortable. He wanted to stop drifting. He wanted to open his eyes.

He tried to open his eyes. Harry did not expect to wake up, but he did. It was very rapid, and when his eyes were open, Harry stared into a glaring white light. He had to blink several times to adjust to it. Everything was very fuzzy. He did not have his glasses.

"Oh! He's awake, he's awake!" Harry hadn't moved his head or blinked his eyes in response to the voice. He knew it all too well. Since he was an eleven year old boy on his way to Hogwarts for his first day, Harry had heard that voice almost constantly. The very first time he had heard it, it was grumbling about tardiness and Muggles being everywhere at King's Cross. Because of that voice, he had arrived at Hogwarts. Now it sounded distinctly different, as though the owner of the voice had been suffering a long head cold.

Harry blinked. Something red came into his view, obstructing the light in his eyes. "Where are my glasses?" Harry croaked with a raspy voice.

"Arthur, get him his glasses so he can see! He's probably half-blind right now and scared to death! And George, fetch him a cup of water. No need for the boy to die of thirst. And hurry!"

Someone slipped glasses onto his face. Three red-headed faces came into view: Arthur and Molly Weasley—Ron and Ginny's parents and Bill Weasley—Ron and Ginny's eldest brother. Arthur and Molly looked much the same as they had when Harry met them. Arthur was a tall man whose formerly lanky frame had acquired the paunchiness of old age and whose flame-red hair had receded to a U shape on his head with gray sprinkling what remained. Molly had wrinkles etched around her mouth and eyes from countless smiles and gray abundant in her crown of red hair. For most of Harry's knowledge of her, she had been what a cruel person would call dumpy and what an honest person would call heavyset.

Bill Weasley was a younger image of his father. Verging on midlife, his tall, lean frame showed some thickening around the waist of his jeans, but he still had a full head of red hair. His usually grinning face was abundant with freckles against the pale skin acquired from his mother. At the moment, his resigned look disquieted Harry.

Harry smiled up at them. It hurt his jaw to smile. "Hullo, everyone," he struggled to say. His voice sounded muffled, like Harry had filled his mouth with cotton balls. It hurt to open his mouth too wide.

"Don't try to talk now, Harry! The mediwizard who was just here said you have a broken jaw. He gave you a bit of Skele-Gro to ease the healing, but you still have a way to go. So you just…rest up," Molly warned.

Molly patted Harry's head as tenderly as the surrogate mother she been to Harry, since he had known her. He suddenly noticed how red her eyes and face were. Arthur sniffled. "We're thankful you're alive, Harry. You need as much strength as you can muster."

"I'm alright," Harry garbled.

"We-we know, dear. It's just that…" Molly dissolved into sobs that wracked her body with laborious spasms.

Arthur wrapped his wife in his arms. "There, there, Molly. Maybe we should just…"

"No. I can stay. No sense in going home just yet. We have to stay."

"What happened?" Harry croaked. To his ears, it sounded like "Wuff haven?"

Molly sniffled and wiped her nose. But when she opened her mouth, no sound came out. It was as though someone had cast a Silencing Charm upon her. She audibly cleared her throat. Finally, she succumbed to sobs that wracked her whole body again and she leaned against Arthur. He rested his thin, graying red hair atop Molly's thin, graying red hair. Harry turned to Bill for answers. The eldest Weasley brother turned his back and stared out the door at Harry's feet.

"What happened?"

"There was an attack on the Hogwarts train. It was a Dark wizard. He was powerful. He had followers." Harry couldn't see Hermione, but her voice was as thick as slow-pouring molasses. She sniffled and blew her nose loudly.

"Was it V-"

Harry heard the swishing motion of Hermione's unruly brown hair when she shook it. "No, it wasn't him, Harry."

"Was it…?" Harry had to swallow to form the next words. His throat had gone dry as the words formed in his throat and moved up to his tongue. "Was it Malfoy?"

"Harry!" Arthur barked over his wife's sobs. His face turned redder with each word. "Why would you say such a thing? He is the head of the Department of International Magical Cooperation and an esteemed governor of Hogwarts. And don't you go digging up that nonsense about Lucius Malfoy being a Death Eater! He's been dead for years!"

"He might not be a Dark wizard, but he knows one." Harry hoped his family understood the accusation clearly enough. His broken jaw made his words sounded like a mangled attempt to imitate Bulgarian to his own ears.

"It isn't unfathomable, Dad. Malfoy's father had…"

"Lucius Malfoy is _dead._ The kinds of accusations you're making are absolutely ludicrous! They sound _exactly_ like something Ron would say!"

Molly cried out. Her legs gave, and she all but collapsed in Arthur's arms. Bill cut his eyes at his parents. "I think you should take Mum out of the room, Dad."

Arthur glared at his eldest son. Then he wrapped an arm around Molly's shoulders and escorted her from Harry's hospital room. Harry watched them leave with a pang of longing in his chest. Something dreadful had happened. "What happened?" he repeated.

"Harry, I'm going to check on Mum. George and Angelina are outside. I'll send them in." Bill took a step then turned to Hermione. She sat in the furthest corner of the room with her knees tucked to her chest and her face buried against her knees. All Harry could see of her was her knees and her untamed brown hair. "Are you alright?"

Hermione nodded. "I'll go check on Ron in a moment," she said in a thick voice.

"I'll see you later, Harry." Then Bill was gone. Harry's question remained.

"Hermione," he had to say slowly, "tell me what happened."

She sniffled again and lifted her head. Tears drew bright red lines down her face, and turned her eyes redder than they were already. "The _Daily Prophet_ says they—the Dark wizard and his followers—blew up the front of the train. I mean the train engine." She sniffled heavily. "When they blew up the train engine, the front carriage blew up too. There were…" Her voice cracked and Hermione's lips moved without a sound. "There were…There were _children_ in the front carriage. There were sixth and seventh years in the front carriage. They're dead. They're all dead."

As Hermione broke down and began sobbing again, Angelina and George strode into the room. They smiled at Harry, and he tried to return the favor. It hurt to smile. After all his talking, Harry needed to rest his mouth anyway.

Angelina Johnson Weasley had the same tall, athletic figure from her years as a Quidditch Chaser at Hogwarts for the Gryffindor House team and later, during her brief tenure with the Hollyhead Harpies. She still had elegant dreadlocks tumbling around her shoulders and the same kind, dark face Harry had known when they were at Hogwarts together. Angelina's only real sign that she had aged since graduating from Hogwarts was that her hips had grown heavier since the birth of her and George's son, Fred Weasley II.

Like his brother Bill, George's hair had grown thinner with each passing year. Like Ron, he was still lean and fit despite the advance of age. He had grown up wearing hand-me-downs from his brothers Bill and Charlie. With his flourishing joke-and-novelty shop, Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes (which had expanded from its anchor shop on Diagon Alley in the heart of Wizarding London to fifteen stores throughout the European Wizarding world), George could afford designer clothes.

It was the absence of George's smile—which had been irrepressible until his identical twin Fred died during the Battle of Hogwarts and returned only after marrying Angelina—that set Harry on alert.

"Hey there, Harry," Angelina said.

"How's it going, Harry? Jaw feeling better?" George added. There was a bag from the joke shop in his left hand, but Harry didn't care for jokes or novelties. He slammed his fists on the bed and thrashed his legs.

"Will someone—anyone—tell me what's going on? Where are Ron and Ginny? Where are my children? What happened that no one will tell me about?" he yelled at the top of his lungs.

"Alright, Harry," George said from the door. He dropped his bag to the floor. "You want to know what happened? I'll tell you: Twelve children and two adults are dead; it seems there are more wounded every ten minutes. The Hogwarts train was destroyed. The kids who didn't get killed were sent to Hogwarts by Floo Powder and Portkey.

"Where is Ron?" George's eyes watered and his face began to turn red. "A Dark wizard erased Ron's memory. He can't remember anything after the Battle of Hogwarts. There's a team of mediwizards examining him now, but there's no guarantee they can help him. He might never remember his wedding, his address, or even his children's names.

Hermione ran from the room sobbing. Angelina rested a hand on Fred's shoulder then sprinted after Hermione. Harry watched and turned his face to the window. The late summer sun was setting over London. It would be nighttime soon. "What happened to Ginny?"

"She's…" George's voice thickened. "She's dead. Just like Fred. Just like my uncles. Ginny is dead; one more Weasley in the ground before it was time. And you're still alive. Practically invincible, aren't you, Harry?" He was crying and sniffling but George continued talking. "While everyone around you died and dies, you just go on living, eh? It's like some bloody curse surrounding you."


End file.
